The Blog

The Global Companies, Ocean Global, LLC, and Sea Global, LLC, filed comments today in response to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) request for comments under its Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking NOAA-NMFS-2015-0088, after the rejection of the emergency rule petition made by Tri Marine Group.

According to the Global Companies, the largest U.S. Flag Tuna Fleet operating in the Western Pacific, supporters of the petition claim that without government intervention there would not be adequate fisheries supply for the canneries located in American Samoa. These claims have failed to materialize, as actual supply of tuna is more than adequate due to the purchase of raw material from foreign fleets, which do not operate under higher U.S. regulatory standards.

“We had to turn vessels away from Pago Pago because we were informed that cannery freezers were full through the end of the year,” said Global Companies Shareholder J. Douglas Hines.

“Part of this oversupply was created by fish harvested by Korean and other Joint Venture vessels operating under Kiribati and PNG flags with no restrictions in the high seas, where the U.S. fleet is severely restricted. Much of that fish was harvested on fish aggregating devices (FADs), while at the same time our boats are forced to operate in distant fishing grounds on free schools of tuna at significantly higher costs.”